Youth: Building the skills of the next generation

Building Confidence and looking to the future of the youth

Barclays is reaching out to the youth. The aim is to help one million young people become employable. How? The youth is connected with work experience opportunities through a Life Skills programme.

Youth talent brought to the workforce

In a Youth Barometer research with 2,000 youngster of ages 14-25, they found that 72% did not believe they would achieve their career ambitions and 28% felt they did not have the right connections to succeed.

The way to fix that, is to increase interaction of the youth with employers, while at school. They will be less likely to become NEET i.e. not in employment, education or training

Developing employability skills in the youth

Barclays launched LifeSkills in May 2013, to follow their Apprenticeship and Moneyskills programmes. Those are aimed at educating youth in financial planning. LifeSkills presents modules in people, work and money. Students can do the course via the LifeSkills website, where they accumulate ‘points’ for completing each of the three modules. This will enable teachers to match students to local work experience placements.

More than 5,865 teachers have registered, expecting to reach over 1 million young people. Over 4,500 schools and education institutions are signed up.

Removing barriers to employment for the youth

Teachers believe that work experience should be mandatory, but opportunities are scarce. Since LifeSkills launched, more than 6,300 work experience placements of between a day and two weeks, were made available.

Employers were encouraged to advertise placements through the LifeSkills gateway. More than 844 have signed up, which includes McDonald’s, Unilever and Hilton. LifeSkills is also affiliating with charities to connect them with NEETs.

Connecting business & youth

The programme was extended to 16-19 year olds, on request of teachers. There are also plans to develop short modules to be used during lectures. 77% of decision makers in SMEs indicated they would prefer to place young people who had employability training.
As SMEs don’t have big HR teams to find appropriate work experience programmes, practical guides were created to help. All the customer groups involved, agreed that help is needed to connect business with the youth.

Building confidence & looking to the future of our youth.

Employers have an important role to play in raising young people’s ambitions and confidence. A young person often thinks they have no skills, but when searching deeper, valuable talents are discovered. Someone might be a football team captain, which shows leadership skills.

The youth needs help to translate their skills to business.

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